Olivia can't make sense of it all

"What the fuck," Olivia mumbled under her breath. She stared at the screen, her eyes watering, her mind trying to make some kind of sense of the letters in the photo, desperately looking for something to spell other than O-l-i-v-i-a.

"Isn't that wild!" said Evan, cackling. He assumed (correctly) that Olivia had reached the last picture, and grabbed the phone out of her hand. He shook his head in disbelief. "Olivia!" he shrieked. "I mean, you have a boyfriend named Brian, and your name is Olivia!"

Tyler took his phone back. "Okay, cool it, Evan. She obviously doesn't find it as funny as you."

"Or you!" Evan added. "We were howling at this!" Evan jumped up and looked out at the café patrons. "Are you all on TikTok? Is this thing in your feed?"

"Evan!" Tyler scolded.

"Oh, shut up. This is too good. Hey!" Evan shouted back at the patrons. "It's like the hottest clip today. Already over two million views. Not safe for work, of course -- though maybe it's only good for work, because this girl is Olivia!" He waved his hands to gesture. "And her boyfriend's name is Brian!"

"Enough!" Tyler said, pushing Evan.

"Dude," Evan countered. "This is some fucked up shit. All I hope is that there's a movie version somewhere."

As Evan was ogling Olivia up and down, Tyler pushed him again, and got him away from her. Still, the damage was done. Olivia felt hurt, both by the TikTok and by Evan. And the increased murmuring from the patrons suggested that they were all scrolling TikTok to find the posting too.

Tyler walked over to Olivia and sighed. "Hey, Liv -- it was nothing. I'm sorry. We thought it was kinda funny."

Olivia still hadn't looked up to make eye contact with anyone. "Yeah, sure," she said quietly. She held her spot without moving until she heard Tyler walk away. Only then did she lift her head -- and in doing so, found Traci staring back at her.

"So ...?" Traci said, as if trying to lure something out of Olivia.

"So ... what?"

Traci chuckled. "So ... is this just a random coincidence?"

Olivia furrowed her brow. "Or ... what else do you think it is?" She glared at Traci with a look of incredulity and dismay. "I don't even know what you're implying." She looked out at the café, and saw a dozen or so people peering at her as if trying to piece together the real person and whatever they'd just read on their phones. "Olivia and Brian are normal names. Anyone could write a story about them."

"Sure," Traci said, nodding. "But there was one about Tyler Jones yesterday, wasn't there?"

Olivia shrugged. "Yeah, it's probably that fuckwit Evan, he's probably making up some garbage and putting it online to get attention."

Traci thought this over. She turned back to look down the line at Evan. "That would make sense, I suppose ..." She turned back to Olivia. "But Evan is such an idiot, isn't he?"

Olivia let out a stifled laugh. "Yeah, he is. Social media isn't for geniuses."

"Maybe not."

Traci and Olivia stood side by side behind the counter. None of the patrons came up to order anything -- it was as if they were keeping a distance from what had been a fairly weird few minutes. As they stood there, Traci watched the café, and Olivia stared at the floor.

"If it's such a coincidence," Traci said softly, "then why is it bugging you so much?"

"Huh?"

Traci waited until Olivia looked up at her. "If it's just the names -- if it's just a random story about Olivia and Brian -- then why aren't you laughing about it and brushing it off?"

Olivia thought about this. Traci's right. I'm not just brushing it off. And it's because of what I know that Traci doesn't -- that the story literally describes, step by step, the things Brian and I did last night.

"That's why it can't be Evan," she mumbled, unaware that the first part of her thought process had only been in her head.

"What's why?"

Evan couldn't have known what we did. Even if I had ever talked about my sex life at work -- which I haven't -- I couldn't have described the ... spanking ... or the ... doggy style ... because Brian and I literally never did any of that before yesterday.

"Because I never said anything, that's why."

"Liv, you're not making sense." Traci put her hand on Olivia's arm. "Why don't you just go home, take the day off, get some rest. We'll set new protocols here and keep the boys off their phones -- or at least off TikTok."

The day became a blur. She wanted to work, to keep a sense of normalcy, but Evan couldn't let it go, and kept telling patrons that "this is the Olivia from the TikTok story!" ... and Traci took the whole thing so seriously (but not in a helpful way).

So instead of working, Olivia left. She got in her rickety blue Honda Civic, and began to drive home, monologuing to herself as she drove.

"How does this happen? How do I go from having a wonderful night with my loving boyfriend to a horror story in which someone is using TikTok as if it were my personal diary?" She turned on the radio, listened to nothing in particular for about ten seconds, and turned it off again. "Even if Evan was making up a story out of nothing, and doing it just to get to me, how would ... how would he ... I mean, maybe, just maybe it's a weird chance that he wrote about spanking and stuff ... but maybe not that weird because lots of people are into that."

She stopped at a red light, and for no particular reason, just screamed. Loudly. Then she turned and saw that the person in the car next to her was watching. So she rolled her eyes and waved. The light turned green.

"Lots of people are into it, just not my boyfriend. Seriously, the story would be completely meaningless if not for that small fact. If Brian had ever once, ever once, one time!, ever ever ever taken me from behind, or ... smacked my behind ... or ... or literally paid any attention to my ass ever, then this would be a non-story."

She looked around, realizing that she wasn't really on her route home, and wasn't entirely sure where she had driven -- though she also didn't care.

"You know who would help me figure this out? Kate. Kate would be able to talk me off this ledge, this ... it's not a ledge like a scary jumping off a building ledge, it's just a me panicking over how stupid this all is ledge." She looked at her phone, mounted on the car dash. "Siri, call Kate."

The screen lit up, and Siri (voiced by Olivia's phone as a man with an Indian accent) said, "Calling Nate Torkelson."

"No!" Olivia frantically hit the red button to hang up the call, but not before (she was sure) Nate Torkelson would get a dropped call from her. (She paused for a moment to try to remember who Nate Torkelson even was, and before arriving at a definitive conclusion, returned to Siri.) "Siri, call Kate Soren." She emphasized the name more that time.

"Calling Kate Soren."

The phone rang a few times, and then Olivia heard the outgoing greeting from Kate's voicemail. "Hi, this is Kate. I'm away from my phone, so leave a message. Or text me. Bye!"

Olivia hit the red button again and ended the call. "Of course, she's in Italy. She can't answer. It's probably a bad time anyway, they're always drinking chianti and eating spaghetti carbonara over there." She drove another stretch without saying anything before blurting out, with no clear sense of continuity or focus, "How, then? How could anything --"

She stopped her diatribe abruptly, and then a moment later, stopped her car abruptly.

"There is absolutely no logical explanation for what has happened. It has to be a weird, random coincidence, and I have to just accept that weird random coincidences happen in the world."